In Less Than Five Minutes, This Pig Farmer Will Show You Everything Wrong With the Processed Meat Industry

Mark Baker’s organic, sustainable homestead has long been persecuted, while factory farms continue to thrive nationwide.

Our farming system has progressively gotten bigger, bolder, and more destructive over the past seven decades since the end of World War II, with chemicals that were once used for war now being adopted for use both in and on our food supply.

This lax attitude has led to a system where companies like Monsanto and Bayer have been given free reign to poison both us and the environment, so much so that “all of the world’s topsoil” could be gone within 60 years due to our pesticide-intensive farming system, according to one senior UN official.

But there used to be a time where animals roamed freely on the land in a highly productive and highly nurturing system of family farms, eating healthy organic and foraged diets of vegetables, grass, insects, and other foods, as farmer and homesteader Mark Baker showcases so clearly in the short video below.

As the old saying goes in the holistic health community, at least among those who eat animal products consistently, you aren’t just what you eat, “you are what your food eats.”

And in this case, the difference between factory farmed animals raised in giant warehouses, and those raised the way Baker shows is abundantly clear.

Despite the growing number of farmers who care for their animals the right way and still feed them natural diets, farmers like Baker are being persecuted, giving free reign to the corporations producing the very food that is making us all sicker in the long run.

Pig Farmer Persecuted By the Government For Doing Things a Better Way

In winter 2015, Baker and his wife Jill had all of the pork confiscated from their farm, ‘Baker’s Green Acres,’ because of what the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund described as “trumped up allegations of selling either uninspected or mislabeled pork products to a restaurant.”

The Michigan Department of Agriculture has been harassing Mark and Jill in an ongoing rift that has lasted for several years, during which the the couple’s “illegal prosciutto” was seized at a local restaurant. Restaurants were reportedly harassed by the state Department of Agriculture not to accept Mark’s local pork products, and butchers were reportedly pressured not to work with Mark as well.

The Bakers’ local butcher was even texted by the state veterinarian just as he was walking into the door to get his pigs processed, just one of several confounding incidents demonstrating how closely the Bakers are being watched by government officials.

One follower of the case and supporter of the Bakers had the following to say in a post by the Defense Fund’swebsite.

“Now, if the state vet gets to decide ultimately whether you keep your license or not, would you continue to take questionable animals?

“Do you see how this is beginning to work? Nothing concrete, just subtle hints dropped to get the desired results. Boy, it must be great to be king.”

Despite suing the state’s DNR and having their heritage pigs declared legal and free to sell a year earlier, the persecution continued, culminating with a secret raid of the couple’s Marion, MI homestead in December 2015.

As is often the case with farmers who practice sustainable agriculture, alleged safety concerns lead to persecution, even as ghastly factory farms continue to poison land and animals alike.

The Bakers have continued to build upon and improve their operations since, relying on the power and unity of family to stay afloat.

While 94% of Americans agree that animals raised for food deserve to live free from abuse and cruelty, the sad reality is that the vast majority of farm animals in the U.S. do not have the chance to roam free or feast on organic vegetables like Mark’s do.

Over 95% of all farm animals in the U.S. are now raised on factory farms, which focus on profit and efficiency at the expense of animal welfare and the environment.

Watch the undercover drone footage of a Smithfield pork operation in North Carolina below:

What a Healthy Organic Farm Looks Like

Baker’s Acres in Marion, MI.

In the video below, Baker shows the audience how he raises his pigs on a closed-loop system where important factors like soil quality, cover crops, crops that support the soil (like clover, which is used for nitrogen fixing), and more all factor into the equation.

His moderate sized herd of pigs is allowed to roam free, feasting on clover, radishes grown nearby for food, acorns and other healthy delicacies. Baker’s operation is clearly ten times cleaner and safer than the factory farms shown above, and yet he has continually faced persecution in spite of it.

Despite the constant harassment, Baker and his farm are alive and well, working to showcase the benefits of sustainable homesteading as best they can.

“Soil is a key component to a successful homesteading operation,” he says in the video, posted to Facebook this fall. “Homesteading is about fertility; fertility of the mind, fertility of the body, fertility of the land…It’s all really true.”

Regardless of your feelings on organic agriculture and meat, I think we can all agree that is the way animals should be treated on the farm.

Skip ahead to the four minute mark to see the clear difference between Mark’s pigs and factory farmed ones, and why we must abolish the current system of wanton destruction and slavery before it’s too late:

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Nick Meyer is a longtime journalist who's been published in the Detroit Free Press, Dallas Morning News and several other outlets. He founded AltHealthWORKS in 2012 to showcase extraordinary stories of healing and the power of organic living, stories the mainstream media always seemed to miss. You can sign up for updates (and receive his free 'Healing Secrets of the Amazon' eBook) by clicking here. You can also check out Nick's Amazon best-seller 'Dirt Cheap Organic' by clicking here, as well as its sequel Dirt Cheap Weight Loss